Telephone service providers are providing a wide variety of advanced features to the residential customer in addition to standard telephone service. These features include, among others, three-way calling, call waiting, and caller-identification. Typically, a residential customer selects which advanced features they would like, and the features are then activated by the service provider for the entire residence.
Even with advanced features, the typical residential customer has a relatively unsophisticated telephone system. In a typical residential system, a main phone line is run to the house. Although additional phone jacks may be located throughout the house, each of the additional phone jacks are simply extensions, or duplicates, of the main line. The control of any telephone feature typically is limited to the original selection from the service provider.